Strategies for Achieving Financial Freedom as a Software Professional. Option 1: Working at a Promising Software Company with Share Options as a Loyal Employee

A good company’s shares reward for loyalty can be quite significant.

Image credit: https://pixabay.com/vectors/money-online-earn-business-cartoon-6780010/

A repost of my popular past article on Medium

In this Strategies for Achieving Financial Freedom as a Software Professional series:

1. Option 1: Working at a Promising Software Company with Share Options as a Loyal Employee

2. Option 2: Solopreneur / Micro-ISV / Start-up Founder: Develop your own apps.

3. Option 3: Software Reselling (Passive Income Way)

This article shares my thoughts, drawing from my personal experience and observations, on how a software professional makes a good living from professional income (i.e. utilizing IT skills, excluding financial investments, e.g. share trading or cryptocurrencies).

I intentionally avoid using “Wealth” or “Rich” in this context. Although the actual monetary value holds significance, additional factors, including job satisfaction, freedom, time for family and a sense of accomplishment, are more important.

For example, an Independent Software Vendor (ISV) with $1000 Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) enables one to live a comfortable life (of his choice) in Thailand. He might think he has more freedom and is even richer than a Senior VP earning a yearly salary of $300,000, who spends many hours on pointless meetings. This ISV might develop ideas for more revenue-generating products/services with that freedom. Upon reaching $2000 MRR, he might opt to reside in China (may develop more opportunities there), and with $3000 MRR, he could even consider Japan (for great food 😊). (Incidentally, an increasing number of developed nations are offering ‘Digital Nomad’ visas.)

If you’ve perused the best-selling book: “The 4-Hour Workweek”, you might find resonance with the idea of the “New Rich” introduced in the book.

Table of Contents:
· Either Way, An Extraordinary Effort is Required.
· Option 1: A Loyal Employee in a Good Company with Generous Stock Options for a Long Period
· Switching Jobs might do well for salary but not for shares.
· My Advice to Succeed at a Top Software Company
∘ Am I qualified to Advice?
∘ My Specific Advice

Either Way, An Extraordinary Effort is Required.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law

Whether Sturgeon’s Law Applies To Human Beings is debatable, but I think that the statement “90% of human beings are ordinary” would likely be accepted by most people.

Attaining “Financial Freedom” can be classified as “Extra-ordinary”. This means higher requirements for software engineers.

There is nothing wrong with a 9–5 software engineer whose daily routines include commuting, long and boring stand-up meetings, silly user story points estimation, waiting for approval of a PR (code review), and frustrated in working on a so-called Agile project with 100+ outstanding defects. It’s perfectly normal and nothing to be ashamed of; you strive to support yourself and your family, and no one can criticize that.

Being ordinary is not a bad thing, not at all.

Here, I am taking a step up, i.e. beyond the ordinary. I wish I had realized this much earlier; if I had, I would have made some different decisions. Whether the endeavour is a success or not, the experience is well worth the effort.